


See Green / See Blue

by kuwabara



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics), Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons), Justice League - All Media Types, Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Asexual Hal Jordan, Falling In Love, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Secret Identity, Slow Burn, rated for later chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-03-07 06:28:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18867616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuwabara/pseuds/kuwabara
Summary: Hal Jordan realizes Batman and Superman are in love, and he realizes that he loves the way they love each other.





	1. Wally Makes a Claim

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on twitter @batmanarchive
> 
> RATING IS FOR LATER CHAPTERS, this is a veeery slow burn.

Batman was probably the least physically affectionate member of the Justice League, and it was…weird. The Martian was a close second, but even then, Hal had seen him put a hand on Superman’s shoulder more than once, and he didn’t seem to have a problem receiving that kind of touch. Bats never shied away from it, per se, but he had a kind of stiffness that made you feel awkward for trying. Even when he was hurt, he’d limp away on his own if he could, and taking a shoulder seemed to give him more pain than an actual injury. There was a mean stubbornness behind it all that made Hal angry at him. He was already barely a team player, but he only seemed less human when he stood in the corner and kept his distance while Flash or someone was making rounds slapping shoulders and giving job-well-dones. It was like he wanted to be uncomfortable and ostracized—he couldn’t even take a high five like a normal person. The Martian even took high fives, once he knew how to. The literal green alien was more human than him.

Superman had tried to explain it away, more than once. “He doesn’t have much family,” he’d say. “He didn’t really grow up with any amount of…camaraderie, we’ll say. It’s just tough for him to be open like that.”

Hal didn’t really feel like taking that to heart, and argued, “Flash didn’t exactly have the best family either, and he turned out just about as socialized as you can get.”

Unappreciative, Wally elbowed him in the side and hissed, “ _dude.”_

Superman just gave a shrug and a smile. “You’re right, but it was different for him. And you don’t know him like I do. He may be a little distant, but it’s not because he’s some kind of robot. He’s just a little shy.”

Hal laughed outright at that. “Shy. Sure, whatever you say,” he grinned, shaking his head. “Good one, Supes.”

 

The conversation had ended with that, and Hal forgot about it. As much as Bats’ personal space bubble annoyed him, it wasn’t something that was generally at the forefront of his attention, and he’d spent a good chunk of his time immediately after that off-planet.

It came back to him, though.

Because one day, they were shooting the shit over bad coffee and a pile of numbers, and conversation circled over to Gotham, and like it was a perfectly reasonable thing to say, Wally said, “I know intimidation is like, Batman’s middle name, but the guy can be pretty nice sometimes.”

Hal stared at him like a grounded fish, for a moment genuinely sure that Wally was fucking with him.

Wally stuck with it, though, saying, “Really, dude. You gotta kind of watch for it, but he cares about all this. He cares about us.”

Hal shook his head, bemused to say the least. “Need I remind you that this is the man I call Spooky?”

Wally leaned back and pointed at him, posture easy like he had an ace in his sleeve. “Need _I_ remind _you_ we’re talking about Superman’s _best friend?_ ”

Hal rolled his eyes, and while he did, that conversation with Superman wiggled around in the back of his head. ‘You don’t know him like I do,’ Supes had said. What did that _mean?_ Everyone talked a big game about the two being best friends, but when Hal thought about it, he couldn’t picture a less likely pair. They didn’t exactly spend a lot of time together, either. Still, Supes did talk an equally big game about Batman being a normal and trustworthy guy behind the scenes, and if anyone could find the good in a guy as dark as Bats, it’d be Big Blue.

Hal realized he was taking a moment too long to respond and gave a wry shake of his head. It was a low blow, but he hated to lose an argument, so- “Yeah, well, the guy’s an orphaned refugee. And not just normal orphaned, last-of-his-species orphaned. I’d take friends wherever I could get them, if it were me.”

“Dude we _both_ know it’s not like that,” Wally choked. “Why don’t we just get down to the meeting, yeah?”

Hal laughed, good natured and genuinely. “The Flash wants to be early, and the Batman can be nice. Next, I’ll crash a commercial airliner into the alps.”

 

The meeting was mostly an argument, but that’s kind of how things were when there wasn’t a global disaster going on. Early on, they’d been called _Super Friends_ in certain media circuits, and they all had a good laugh at that. Some of them were friendly, sure. But as a group, they weren’t exactly…cohesive. They tried to be. Pretended to be. Put on the smiles for the midday news, for sure. But behind closed doors, they had their problems.

“We need to be talking about this on a theoretical scale,” Superman was saying, his posture starting to box out with his building frustration. He had a forearm resting on papers in front of him and his other hand was flat against the tabletop, like he might push himself up to standing position the moment things got out of hand. “As much as this is about Green Arrow, as soon as we make a decision one way or another, we’re going to have to accept that that sends a message to other heroes.”

Batman looked as cool and calm as ever. “And that message is no,” he ground out.

Something about the finality of that pissed Hal off. “And why’s that?” he barked. “Arrow’s as good as the rest of them—as good as the rest of _us._ And it’s not like we don’t need the help. There’s new threats cropping up on the daily, we need to be realistic about what’s out there and what we’re capable of.”

Batman turned to him coolly. “And you need to be realistic about the authority we possess. We cannot simply build an army because we’re stronger than the average human. I believe that would be classified as _belligerent._ ”

“It’s not _belligerent_ if we’re the good guys, asshole!” Hal spat, pounding the table.

Superman sighed, leaning back in his chair. “This is exactly why we need to think of this theoretically, instead of our judgement getting clouded by any personal opinions on Green Arrow. This isn’t just about letting him in, this is about the potential to expand the team.”

Diana pitched in, still fairly level-headed. “I think it’s a good idea. On a theoretical basis and specifically with Green Arrow. Lantern is right—we need more help than we have.”

Batman still had hardly moved. His mouth was tight and the lenses on his cowl didn’t give anything away. “Lantern is a hotheaded idiot and he isn’t thinking about this as anything other than an argument to be had. Expansion is dangerous, and Green Arrow is a bad idea.”

Next to him, Wally was wide eyed and small in his spot.

Hal felt his nostrils flare. He could feel the words scraping out of him as he rose to stand. “ _Excuse me?,_ ” he said. “Setting aside the fact that you seriously just called me an idiot—and trust me, we’ll get to that—you’re just going to let shit keep happening and hope we’re enough to keep it at bay? I’m not even on planet six months out of the year—what happens next time Aquaman decides there’s too much plastic in the ocean? We just hope enough heroes show up?”

Deliberately, Batman crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes. “We’ve gotten this far, haven’t we?”

“Barely,” Hal hissed, so angry his voice was getting tight. He opened his mouth to say more, but his ring pulsed against his finger, a sudden green light going off and on in beats. “Saved by the bell,” he groused. “If you need me I’ll be on Oa.”

No one said anything while he stalked out of the room, but after the door slid shut behind him, a quieter conversation started back up.

Hal thought up a bubble around him and opened up the bay doors, still grinding his teeth. ‘The guy can be pretty nice sometimes,’ Wally had said. As if.


	2. Superman Makes an Apology

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (and Hal Jordan makes a house call)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it occurs to me that I don't know................anything really about green lantern
> 
> also, the "canon" here is just a very big hodgepodge of everything. it mostly follows the animated series, if you....you know...include hal.

Hal was just breaching the outer rim of the galaxy when Superman caught him. He had been taking his time traveling—he liked to mosey through the milky way before shooting off to further corners—but even then, it couldn’t have been an hour since he left the watchtower. Supes must’ve left the minute the meeting closed. He reared up next to Hal, keeping speed, arms kind of awkward at his sides. He looked uncharacteristically stiff and bulky, floating there.

“You have a moment?” He asked, eyebrows scrunching. Hal would’ve called him nervous, if it wasn’t the poster boy of the League himself ducking his head and giving a guilty smile.

Hal slowed to a stop, giving a small nod.

Supes wetted his lips, hesitating just a tick before saying, “I wanted to apologize for things getting out of hand back there.”

That caught Hal by surprise. “That feels…unnecessary,” he offered.

“Not at all,” Supes said, suddenly sure of himself in a way that wasn’t present a moment before. “What Batman said was—well, frankly it was uncalled for, unproductive, and rude.”

Hal laughed a little. “Not what I meant. You’re right, he was an ass, and…well, _he_ should apologize. Not you. It’s not your responsibility to make nice for him, he’s a big boy.”

 “Ah, I think we both know that isn’t exactly likely.”

Hal rolled his eyes, but he wasn’t really mad. Not out here, the stars twinkling and only the lightest tug of gravity pulling on his side. Not with Superman smiling at him like he needed consolation. He went to say something about Batman, but what Wally had said pricked his memory. “Can I ask you something?” he pressed, pinching his tongue between his teeth.

Supes raised his eyebrows. “What is it?”

Hal rubbed at his chin, genuinely serious. “Are you and Bats really best friends?”

There was a moment of stillness between them before Superman just outright laughed, doubling over for a second. “We—Hal, we’ve known each other a long time, me and Batman,” he said, classic Super-mirth squinting the corners of his eyes tightly. He had such a grand smile, when he meant it. Even when he didn’t, actually, but—this, that genuine stretch of teeth and twinkling eyes—there was nothing like it. “I know he seems like a grouch,” he went on, “But there’s really something else underneath it all. You get to know him like I do, and…well, there no one I’d rather have at my side.”

Hal swallowed the childish instinct to say “that’s gay, man” and just nodded, thinking about it. ‘You don’t know him like I do,’ Superman had said to him before. Maybe that was true. It was hard to imagine Superman smiling this hard through a lie—he just…didn’t do that. He was a fairly transparent guy. There were two sides to the mask, of course, but he still didn’t ever really outright lie.

Hal took a breath, not sure what to think about any of it. “Maybe I’ll see it one day,” he said. It was kind of empty, in all honesty. He couldn’t imagine Bats being anything other than petty and controlling. And as much as he liked to sit under the Super Smile, he did have to get to Oa.

“I hope so,” Supes said. Of course, he looked as genuine as the day he was born.

Hal shook his head, laughing to himself about it all. “I’ll be seeing you, man. Tell Bats to fight his own battles, will you?”

He caught Superman giving a casual salute goodbye before he turned out towards the stars.

 

The minute he hit Oa he was given a junior recruit and a flight plan, which wasn’t at all what he was expecting. For Hal, getting called out of sector generally meant a war, a funeral, or a briefing. He wasn’t really a bigshot, and as much as he did get called off planet, it wasn’t often that he had to leave the sector. He was told they’d get a brief when they arrived.

The kid was humanoid, and quiet. She’d just gotten through Kilowog. Seemed the serious type, and Hal was kind of buggered about it, but he tried to shrug it off. Less talk meant less distraction. She was probably a solid recruit. They flew out quietly, if not awkwardly.

A round table of lanterns were waiting for them, none that Hal really recognized, on a planet that he couldn’t remember having been to. Everyone was all shaped the same, more or less, and Hal figured that’s why he was called in, too. He sat back and listened, told his recruit to do the same.

“We’re here diplomatically,” they were told. “The two dominant cultures have been warring, and they’ve agreed to a pre-treaty conference. Our job is to be unbiased, and to step in if things get out of hand.”

Hal raised a hand. “Can I ask why I’ve been called in last minute?”

“They requested that we equally represent their binary, so we needed another visually male lantern.”

Hal looked around the room, kind of surprised he hadn’t noticed the lanterns were an even split of feminine and masculine humanoids. Then he looked at his recruit. “Doesn’t she throw it back off, then?”

Another lantern answered him. “No, she was requested for basically the same reason. We have a masculine presenting junior recruit here to shadow the proceeding. The locals asked that we get a girl to observe as well.”

That made…a certain kind of sense, then. Hal nodded, and let the brief finish out—though not before muttering to his recruit, “This place sure sounds fucky.”

 

And it _was_ fucky. Hal was expecting it to be like an episode of Star Trek, a cartoonish matriarchy against a familiar patriarchy, but he couldn’t actually discern one culture from the other. It was just a room full of people arguing, without any clear cut or side. In fact, the only thing that was clear was the artificial divide between the lanterns, with women and men sitting alternatingly, the junior recruits each on either side of the long lantern table. It almost felt like a board meeting more than a peace conference, with one long table of “officials” against a room full of laymen.

Very little got accomplished until a local stood up and flung their version of a tomahawk into the chest of the person across them—and then a lot got done all at once.

The negotiations hadn’t really been getting anywhere, and it was clear tensions were rising, but even then, it was a sudden move. No one was expecting it, and so no one was present enough to stop it. The blade stuck thickly in skin and the person dropped backwards out of their chair with the force of it, gurgling blood out of their chest and mouth, wailing from the pain of it. A lantern was on them in a snap, getting a construct to hedge the bleeding while the room erupted.

A part of Hal was glad something he could understand was happening, but overall it just fucking sucked. Everyone had weapons hidden. Whoever didn’t was just as happy to go at it hand-to hand. The entire room was a brawl cut up against intermittent green light and veritable wall of noise.

He got the recruits out of the building and into a solid construct with the other advisor and jumped back into the scuffle, anxious to help where he could, his hands shaking for the need to be useful here. The other lanterns were systematically trying to separate the two groups without actively fighting anyone, but that effectively meant that Hal was a punching bag without a purpose—as long as he couldn’t tell the difference between any of the locals, there wasn’t really anything he could do to separate them. He could pull them off of each other, sure, but once that was done he didn’t know where to put anyone, how to group them together. He didn’t know what the fuck it was that made anyone different from each other _._ And fighting back would jeopardize their standing as diplomatic officers.

So, he went around taking punches where he could, shielding people from each other while everyone else worked to get them apart. He had to do something. His blood pulsed with the need to do _something_. The ring took the brunt of it, but there were a few good hits to his ribs while he was distracted, and he got an absolutely nasty kick in the face the one time he went to restrain someone himself.

 And at the end of it, they just sent him home. He had to escort the junior recruit back to Oa first, but once it was settled, they just turned him loose. It was going to take too long to get another conference set for Hal to reasonably wait to sit in again, and he wasn’t much help in the first place—not that they had been expecting things to end like this. Everyone walked away pretty pissed it had gone pear shaped. Hal especially. It’d been a waste of a fucking day, and all he had for it was sore ribs and a long trip home.

 

He called into the watchtower as he made his way back from Oa. It was J’onn on the comms, as usual.

“I’m gonna be back Earth-side in about fifteen hours,” Hal told him. He was tired, but in a way that just made him restless. “I didn’t expect to be back so soon, so feel free to stick me back on monitor if you need me.”

“Sounds good, Lantern,” J’onn rumbled back. “It looks like just as you will be arriving, Hawkgirl will be starting the second half of a double shift. Would you like to relieve her?”

“You can plan on it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter, "Robin Makes an Appearance"
> 
> let me know if you spot any mistakes and they'll be fixed!


	3. Robin Makes an Appearance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS FOR WAITING....! i went back to work, and forgot how to have hobbies at the same time. but im back at it, at least for the moment.
> 
> this chapters short, but....its here!

Hal landed at the Watchtower just as the sun would’ve been setting in Coast City. He could feel himself start to build a headache in a way that told him he’d been awake for too long—space travel made it difficult to keep track of day and night, and he had never really been one to doze on an assignment. He’d guess that it’d been about thirty-six hours since he left, but that was a pretty rough estimate. He couldn’t exactly keep time by the movement of another galaxy’s sun.

  
He was surprised to find, as he made his way up to the monitor room, that it wasn’t just Hawkgirl at the post. It was Hawkgirl and Batman.

  
And—a kid, with a cafeteria chair pulled up next to Batman, his legs swinging like a toddler.

  
Lightly, Hal joked, “Wish I would’ve known it was bring your sidekick to work day, I just dropped mine off at Oa.”

  
Hawkgirl stood to give up her chair. “I didn’t know you had a sidekick,” she said.

  
Hal opened his mouth but Bats beat him, curtly saying, “He doesn’t.”

  
The kid grinned at Hal like a predator.

 

“I did actually have a cadet assigned to me while I was away, thank you very much.”

  
Hawkgirl laughed while she passed him, and in that lightly cruel way she had, said, “I’m surprised you’re not still a cadet, yourself.”

  
Hal sneered a very funny at the shutting door and swiveled his chair around to face Batman and Robin. “Seriously though,” he said, leaning back with his fingers threaded behind his head. “What’s with the kid? Couldn’t find a sitter?”

  
Robin quickly argued, “I’m old enough to look after myself.”

  
And quietly, next to him, Batman said, “No you’re not.”

  
He didn’t even look at Hal, let alone give him an actual answer.

  
“This is gonna be one hell of a shift,” Hal sighed.

  
Batman grumbled through a stiffly closed mouth, and Robin rolled his eyes.

 

It wasn’t the worst, actually. Robin was a pretty snarky kid, but he got along with Hal much easier than Batman did. He was much more prone to conversation than Bats as well, and that made time pass a little easier. Batman didn’t seem to approve much of it, though, sitting silently in the middle of all their talk. He crossed his arms and watched the monitor with something between boredom and diligence, only really turning his head when one of them said something untoward—like when Robin inanely said, “I thought Green Lantern was a black guy.”

  
That made Hal laugh pretty hard. “That’s the other Green Lantern. There’s two of us,” he explained. “Well—there’s actually a bunch of us. But there’s two Green Lantern’s that hang around Earth. John’s on another planet right now, so you get me instead.”

  
“Is it confusing when you’re both on Earth? Like if someone asks for Green Lantern’s help do you both show up?”

  
Before Hal could tell him yeah, actually, a buzzing alarm went off and a handful of notices sprouted up on the monitor. Batman went through them and pulled up the viewer on what was going wrong.

  
“Explosion in Michigan’s upper peninsula,” Bats read off. “Looks like a truck transporting hazardous material went through a guardrail and rolled. The fire is contained but cleanup may be more than that county can handle.”

  
Hal leaned over to look at the map. “How far inland are they? If any of that gets into the lakes, the entire watershed could be wrecked.”

  
Batman made a sound in the back of his throat. “Barely two miles inland, and they rolled right onto a river that lets into Lake Michigan.”

  
Hal didn’t hesitate. “We gotta get down there. You and Robin can evacuate anyone too close while I mop up the ice, the longer we sit here the worse it could be.”

 

Batman tried to push back, grunting, “That’s not your call to make."

  
It blindsided Hal for a moment. “I—didn’t exactly think this was an open discussion, fixing this kind of thing is why we’re here in the first place,” he countered. He had already started toward the door but now he was stuck in his spot, rooted by Batman’s indignation.

  
Robin sat back in his chair like he’d heard this argument a thousand times already.

  
“You may be able to help, but with a hazardous leak me and Robin are just as vulnerable as any other citizen,” Batman argued.

  
Hal dropped his arms to his sides. “You—what, you’re telling me you don’t have some kind of lead lining in your batsuit? You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” he said. “You and Robin are always as vulnerable as any other citizen, why is this any different? The longer we argue about this, the harder this water will be to clean! The whole point of monitor duty is to get someone on scene as soon as something blows up, it’s our responsibility to help them.”

  
Batman rose slowly, the eye covers on his cowl narrowing into slits as he turned. “Fine,” he said, tensely. He stalked past Hal and turned around at the elevator, and while he crossed his arms, he spat out, “Watch your language next time.”

  
Hal tried not to dwell on how much of an easy win that was. The whole night had been weird, with Robin hanging around like a mid-tier raincloud. It was like Batman suddenly wasn’t even mildly intimidating. He looked silly for being so stoic—because he’d say something stiffly and Robin just laughed at him for it, instead of ruffling like Hal did or ignoring it like anyone else might. Even when nothing happened, Bats just seemed…more normal, with a kid next to him. There wasn’t an ounce of awkward between them, somehow. Robin took every weird, infuriatingly off-beat thing that Batman did and smoothly rolled with it. If Hal had doubted how Batman worked with children before, he wasn’t sure he did anymore. He was still a dick, but it was like he had a chaser to tone it down, now.


	4. Hal Makes a Mistake

As they made it to the ice, Hal took post scooping gunk up off it and into barrels the county had lined up. Batman and Robin were immediately flocked by local police, and Hal was happy to leave that end of things up to them. He sort of clashed with cops, in uniform or not. The adrenaline of suddenly having something to do killed his headache and numbed out the ache in his ribs while years of emergency training and work for the corps kept his brain comfortably on autopilot.

There was really a lot of junk spilled everywhere—Hal was sorely glad he won the argument on going down to help. He could see at least one person getting field treatment for a chemical burn out on the sidelines. It kind of seemed like the truck rolled and the whole city flocked out to look at it.

Hal was on the last stretch of cleanup when he felt a lurch in his stomach that he knew much better than any green lantern really should. His ring was low on charge. Which…honestly, of course it was—he went off planet half cocked and then flew straight back to the Watchtower. He hadn’t charged the damn thing in like a week, he was so tired and fucked up flying home he didn’t even think about it.

While he was beating himself up, something skittered out onto the ice— _Robin_ skittered out to the ice. He had his hand up drawing a circle over and over, like it was supposed to signal something to Hal. While he ran forward, he biffed a step and slid out into the scrapings of ice that had held the spilled hazard. Stationary in the air, Hal was stuck like a broken watch hand while the ice cracked and sucked Robin in.

His brain clicked off, and he shot into the hole in the ice after the kid.

 

When he woke up, he woke up slowly. His whole body was heavy. He distantly felt like he was burning all over, but not in a way that made him too hot under his blanket. There was just the sensation of his skin in flames. He tried to take in a breath, and it felt like breathing through water, thick and painful, his chest tightly constricted. He wasn’t really sure where he was. He had to blink to get anything to focus, and even then the room was incredibly nondescript. There was medical equipment, but not arranged in a way you’d see anywhere normal. He turned his head and things started to click into place; he wasn’t in any regular hospital because he wasn’t Hal Jordan lying heavy and burning in bed—he was Green Lantern.

Next to him was another med bed slanted to make you sit upright, and he could see Superman asleep in it. Which was—odd. That Superman even _needed_ to sleep was odd, but to see him in a hospital bed was completely indescribably unsettling. Hal kept blinking at him, trying to figure out what had happened here. How Superman had gotten fucked enough to be in what Hal assumed was a League run med room.

And then his eyes cleared a little and his brain properly parsed what he was seeing.

Robin was curled into Superman’s side, the blanket up to his chin and a number of twisting cords and tubes coming out from under it. Supes had his arm around the kid and they were just laying there together, snoring, like it was natural. Like they were family or something. Robin couldn’t be more than thirteen, and he just looked that much smaller next to Supes. It was…cute. And it tugged on Hal’s heart in a complicated way. He remembered how Batman had talked quietly to Robin, how he had easily sat so closely with him. There was something between them that Hal hadn’t been able to read, but seeing Superman wound around the boy like that—it started to click. This kid, he was like family to Bats.

Suddenly a bit nauseous, Hal remembered what had happened, what they were doing in the hospital.

He ground his teeth together and closed his eyes, bringing a hand up to squeeze the bridge of his nose. He was so fucking stupid. He knew better than to let his ring run dry, just because he didn’t feel like stopping home after a mission.

He let out a breath and just sat in his own shame. And slowly, he realized that when he had put his hand up to his face, he’d distinctly felt a domino mask. He checked his ring—very, very dead—and then felt at his face again. A real, tangible domino was stuck to him. It was a little small, blacking out the corners of his vision, but it was there. He didn’t even have pants on, and he had a domino. Who the fuck was looking out for his discretion so haphazardly?

Deep and rumbling in a way that mixed unobtrusively with the buzzing heart monitors, someone spoke up from a dark corner. “It’s one of Robin’s.”

Hal jumped out of his skin at the noise and wheezed at the shooting pain in his ribs, instinctively folding in on himself and holding his middle while he sucked in air. “Fucking hell,” he hissed—but it came out broken and cracking, his throat burning from it. His chest felt like it was under a load of bricks and little tears were gathering along the eyeline of his mask while he tried to breathe through the three different kinds of pain.

Batman put a finger up against his lips and nodded toward the other bed. _Shh._ Hal squinted at him belligerently.

“What the fuck are you doing hiding in the fucking corner?” He croaked, painfully. He kept his voice low because it was the polite thing to do, not because Bats was demanding it, fuck you very much. And he didn’t think he could talk at full volume if he tried, but that was more of an afterthought if anything.

Batman came into the light, just a half step. “Checking on you two,” he said simply.

Hal let himself relax a fraction. Of course Bats was checking in on them. Robin was his partner, and he was a tiny little kid, and he’d fallen through three inches of ice for who knows how long.

“Is he alright?” Hal asked, nodding over to the sleepers.

“About as much as you are,” Batman gave. “You shouldn’t try to talk so much, difficult as that may be. You inhaled about two pints of water when your ring gave out. There have been…a number of tubes down your throat in the last eight hours.”

Two pints of water. No wonder his chest felt like hell. He fucking drowned himself.

“You almost had a heart attack, as well,” Bats murmured. He was still standing half in the light, hidden under his cape like a graduation gown, his face neutral and impassive. It was weird that he was being talkative, like this, when it wasn’t an argument. Weird for him to give up anything without it being pried out.

“Three kinds of dead in one day, that might be a record.”

Bats hummed, and then there was another silence between them. Hal wanted to combat it, but between the effort it was taking him to breath and the steady buzz of machinery, he was starting to fall back asleep. He could hear Robin snoring into Superman’s armpit, and it made sleep all the more tempting.

He was roused out of it when Batman spoke again.

“You knew your ring wasn’t charged,” he said.

Hal blinked, trying to turn his brain back on. “Well—yeah,” he admitted. And, before he could get berated, “Stupid, I know.”

Batman was silent for another moment. Hal closed his eyes. His _body_ was tired.

Then, quietly, “Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another short one, but its cute at least! Next up we take a step away from hal and Lois Makes a Date


End file.
